Surviving the Slack Line of Training

As you gaze at your computer screen through an internal blurry lens you indifferently sense a spot of drool on your chin. Time passes. The coffee cup you’ve been nursing is empty yet its magical contents didn’t even ignite a spark on your energy level.

You didn’t have the energy to pick up the phone when it rang; you have 5 messages on your voicemail. You focus on the particles of dust on your desk. They remind you of the pile of clothes that you stepped over when you stumbled to put on your running clothes at 5:00 that morning. You make a few mental notes; in 5 weeks when my race is over I need to: - do laundry, - clean growing piles on my desk, - give the dog a bath, - eliminate science projects from the fridge.

To alleviate the laundry issue and reward yourself for your 8 hour training session on Saturday, you Overnight Air 3 more Patagonia capaline running shirts. For the 10th time this week you ponder the reasons that you are throwing your entire being into training for your upcoming ultra endurance event. The phone rings again. You begin to cry.

After months of building to a crescendo you’re striving to survive the training workload that will make or break your upcoming race. Make it through this gauntlet of training and you raise your fitness several notches. Fall off this edge into injury, illness, or an inability to mentally deal, and go to the start line with lingering doubts and deflated fitness and confidence.

Surviving the crux of training for a long and personally important event is successfully walking the slack line of endurance sports. Despite our difficulty in believing while we live it – it is possible. Wipe the drool, order take out for dinner and incorporate these rules for training success:


Racing in Costa Rica...

5 Tips for Surviving the Slack Line of Endurance Training:

1) Cut yourself some slack.
If you are otherwise the quintessential co-worker, parent, partner, partier or citizen, cut yourself some slack on your perfectionism during slack line training. Cut a few things on your list loose. They’ll still be there when you cross the finish line.

2) Embrace your slack line journey.
This hellish, passionate, journey of hard core training is some of the best living you’ll ever do. Love it large. When the fat lady sings you’ll be wishing you were here again.

3) Get help while you’re doing slack line time.
Your friends and family admirably think you’re a freak for the training time you’re putting in. Cap on your icon status. Make deals for their help, buy presents, barter for time. Get help with the day to day stuff from those who admire from afar. Just make sure that they are on the receiving end as well.

4) Notice the gains you are making in your slack line training.
This is as studly as your body will ever be! You’ll feel like superman on race day. Suck your transcendent fitness level for all you can. It’s only downhill from here.

5) Pamper the slack liner in you.
Eat healthy, sleep well and long, get massage, stretch, bypass a night out by staying home with your legs elevated. Give yourself your best shot at walking that line successfully.

Surviving the most difficult part of training for an upcoming ultra endurance event is as tough as it comes for an endurance athlete. As busy folks we have to balance work, relationships, and the rest of life that needs attending while hanging on through our training fatigue.

Balance on that slack line right up to your taper and come race day you’ll get to eat all the icing you want on your cake of life. It’ll all be worth it and more.

Got Electrolytes?

A while back I was trotting along in a 100K trail race in the Marin Headlands engaging in a likely ultra running activity - chatting. Yet this particular chatting experience was unique in that I was actually being "outchatted" by a gentleman who worked in a think tank in Texas for cancer research.

He told me about recent breakthroughs with his work, his running, and his predisposition for memorizing certain categories of things in life, like music and wine. I passed the time trying to baffle his photographic memory by throwing down questions like: “Where is the appellation for the grapes used in David Bruce’s award winning 1997 Pinot Noir?”. Or, “Who wrote the music theme for the show Gilligan’s Island?” Despite my efforts, I couldn’t stump him.

Then all of a sudden he became quiet. I glanced over to notice he was white as a sheet and laboring. The instinctual coach in me had been noticing out of the corner of my eye that he had been eating and drinking adequately the last few hours, so I didn’t suspect a calorie or water bonk. I asked him how he was feeling and he confirmed with a few expletives, my observations.

I swung my fanny pack around and pulled out my running “drug bag”. I grabbed 3 electrolyte tablets and as we jogged along I reached over, “here take these”. Without so much as a grunt, he snatched the tablets from my hand and downed them with a swig of water. For a verbose gentleman of such refined intellectual property, he didn’t so much as feign to ask me what I was pushing.

A half hour later, he caught back up to me. “Man, what did you give me back there, I feel great!” I laughed and offered him further information on the least touted yet, one of the most critical ingredients to successful endurance racing – electrolytes.

There are three nutritional components to endurance racing and training that are crucial to our success and well being: calories, fluids and electrolytes. One of the arts of racing successfully over hours or days is balancing these three necessities. Refining this craft may take months or years of racing and training.

Virtually all of the drinks, bars, and other designer foods on the market do not harbor adequate electrolytes for training and racing. We need to take additional supplements in our adventures to aid our balancing act. There are many products that address this need: Succeed, Thermo Tabs and E-caps to name a few. I tend to lean toward the products that house the biggest bang per tablet of sodium and potassium.

Not only can electrolyte supplements save you from the “electrolyte bonk”, they can aid in maintaining equilibrium of the other nutrients and fluids you are ingesting. Taking them at regular intervals, just like calories, will support your ability to walk that tight rope of sustaining mental focus and energy.

With of few more tokens from my drug bag, my temporary drug buddy went on to kick my ass in the 100K. The next week, he ventured back to Texas to find out that a piece of his recent cancer research findings had been proven to bring us several steps closer to finding the cure for ovarian cancer. He also promptly proceeded to purchase his new found racing elixir – electrolyte tablets.


Schneider rappelling in Australia...